Rivets Drilled For F-1205G ELT Antenna Mount

Since I’ve been on a hole drilling kick as of late, decided to punch more holes into the RV-12 this afternoon. One item that was noticed while perusing through the RV-12 drawings a while back was that the mounting plate for the ELT antenna requires drilling out three rivets from the F-1205A mid fuselage brace. Just for curiosity, I looked on my CD of RV-12 construction drawings to see if there was any mention of leaving the three rivets in question … and there is not. Apparently this is an item that has not been updated in the instructions yet. So RV-12 builders should consider leaving the three rivets shown in the photo below open.

Really??? Why not tell the builder to not rivet these three rivets when the F-1205A mid fuselage brace is installed????  Anyway, the three rivets in the F-1205A mid fuselage brace that need to be removed are in line with the three mounting holes in the F-1205G ELT antenna mount in my hand.

The instructions for the ELT antenna mounting plate instillation show the three rivets shown in the above photo need to be removed and the rivet holes enlarged to #19. After the rivets have been removed and the holes drilled to #19 there are three nutplates that need to be installed.

Using a drill guide to help keep the hole in proper alignment while enlarging the rivet hole to #19.

The next step is to drill mounting holes for the K-1000-08 nutplates that need to be installed. The tip of a screw was tapered so it could be threaded easily onto the wrong end of the nutplate. This will allow the screw to stay centered in the hole and thus keeping the nutplate centered while the nutplate’s mounting holes are drilled.

The tip of a screw was tapered and threaded through the nutplate backwards so the nutplate could be used as a drill guide.

Using the nutplate as a drill guide for the mounting holes which need to be drilled to #40.

The rivets Van’s has chosen for mounting the nutplates are flush rivets … however, there is no mention in the instructions to countersink the rivet holes. Guess they figure we should know to do that by now without mention.

Machine countersinking one of the six rivet holes for the three nutplates.

Using a hand rivet puller to rivet one of the nutplates onto the F-1205A mid fuselage brace.

All finished with the conversion to nutplates for installing the ELT antenna mounting plate. By golly … the screws actually fit nicely.

There are no plans to mount the ELT antenna mounting plate anytime soon because it still needs to be top-coated with the interior paint. But the task was much easier to do now while access is still good.